Linux and open source articles and tutorials based on real world projects and deployments

Basic NTP Configuration on CentOS 6

It is very important to have proper time set on your VPS system. There are many reasons for this. One of them is security, all log entries must have proper time stamp for successful troubleshooting, also some networking applications will not work properly with time not set properly. On Linux time synchronization is done with NTP time protocol. It is very easy to install and do basic configuration. We will use CentOS as an example.
1. Install ntp protocol

yum install ntp

2. Synchronize the system clock with outside time server

ntpdate pool.ntp.org

3. Make sure ntp will be on at startup

chkconfig ntpd on

4. And finally start the service.

/etc/init.d/service ntpd start

With VPS server in some cases it is not very clear on what is the best way to synchronize time. In many cases it will depend on VPS Hosting provider and there configuration. RedHat suggests using ntp service on vps server.